LONDON — The central bankers of the 18-nation eurozone are meeting Thursday in Brussels amid growing international pressure to act boldly to head off the threat of an economically-crippling collapse in prices.

With inflation far below the European Central Bank's target of just under 2% a year, there are fresh suggestions that fears of deflation may soon trump ECB policymakers' long-standing dread of inflation. If so, President Mario Draghi may be forced to follow his central bank counterparts in the USA, Great Britain and Japan down the road of unconventional monetary policies.

Earlier this week, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development called on the ECB to move decisively to push inflation toward its target and "be ready for additional non-conventional stimulus." International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde pressed the ECB to act soon during last month's spring meeting of of the IMF and World Bank in Washington.

Draghi has said for some time that "all options are available" to the ECB to stabilize the euro-currency area's economies, including quantitative easing. That's what the Federal Reserve has been doing since 2012, buying large amounts of government bonds and other securities to boost liquidity and lending in the U.S. economy. The Bank of England and the Bank of Japan have taken similar measures.

"It's no longer taboo to talk about QE in relation to the European Central Bank," says Matthew Lynn, a London-based financial writer and columnist. "Now, it's about when, not if, the ECB starts printing money."

The latest read on consumer prices across the euro region showed a rise of just 0.7%, up from March's 0.5%, according to Eurostat, the European Union statistics agency.

"The ECB is probably only considering QE now because it has to," says David Lamb, a senior dealer at FEXCO, a financial services firm. "With inflation so low, and the way the economy is going, to really kick start things it's a necessity everywhere — which is why it's been used in the U.S. and the U.K. already."

Eurozone GDP growth has been steady but modest. It will likely expand 1.2% this year. Periods of persistent declining prices, often cited in the example of Japan, where the economy from the early 1990s experienced almost two decades of deflation, can lead to pernicious and corrosive low growth, increased unemployment and long-lasting economic recession.

Some ECB observers think the bank will hold back on QE at least this month. Draghi has said more information is needed before acting and ECB staff are due to present their latest inflation forecasts at Thursday's meeting.

"Generally speaking, no one really expects the ECB to do it," says Lamb, referring to pulling the trigger on QE. "Perhaps in June they may have to do something if things deteriorate on prices, but if it does the likelihood is more that it will be something on interest rates. For now, QE is just a bit of a logistical and constitutional minefield for the ECB."

The received line over ECB reluctance to help bolster prices by increasing the money supply through bond purchases revolves around the idea that Germany — Europe's largest economy and the most powerful voice in the ECB — has a historical fear of inflation that, as the Pew Research Center wrote in a blog post, is a residue of the "German psyche that has been permanently scarred by the hyperinflation of the 1920s."

There are practical considerations at work here, too.

Under the ECB's own rules it is not permitted to finance individual governments by purchasing a nation's bonds or debt. At the same time, there is no such thing as an ECB bond, so it is not clear what bonds the ECB would buy were it to express a preference for QE.

Plus, while the economies of Greece, Italy and Spain are in a better place now than they were a year ago, many eurozone nations are still in the throes of high unemployment mixed with weak consumer demand. The German economy, by contrast, has been ticking away quite nicely, and the German public continues to dig in its heels over another European bailout.

That's not to say QE won't happen.

"There is already a long list of reasons for starting up eurozone quantitative easing. A flat lining economy and falling prices are two good ones. But it is also one of the best ways of getting a currency down," Lynn, the London-based journalist has written. "The dollar has remained weak despite the strengthening U.S. economy because the Federal Reserve is still printing money. The yen has been forced lower by massive QE. So was the British pound. A full-scale blitz of QE from the ECB — and its program is likely to out-gun even the Fed — will send the euro tumbling."